I would like to dedicate this book to André’s and Karl’s children, my three-year-old niece and nephew, Nadira and Ezekiel Danticat, who are the first second-generation Haitian Americans (in Nadira’s case, Haitian Jamaican American) born in our family. The fact that our Haitian relatives still living in the Haitian mountains are able to look at pictures and battery-powered home video reels of them during my visits there clearly demonstrates the endless bond that exists for us between the mountains of Beauséjour, our ancestral village modeled in this book, and the skyscrapers of New York City. I hope one day to take Nadira and Ezekiel to visit these Haitian mountains with me; however, in the meantime, I will let Celiane Espérance and her “sweet little book” be their guide.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the following sources:

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s inaugural address on February 7, 2001, from “BBC Summary of World Broadcasts,” British Broadcasting Corporation.

I am also very grateful to the director and staff of the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where I resided for one month during the writing of this book, and to Amy Griffin and Yves Colon for their time and effort.

About the Book

Celiane Espérance lives in the Haitian countryside with her mother, Manman, and her brother, Moy. All have been patiently waiting to join their father, who has been living and working in Brooklyn, New York, trying to raise money and establish paperwork for his family to leave Haiti. When Celiane receives a journal from her teacher for her excellent schoolwork, she decides to record her thoughts on the events that take place around her as her family prepares to move to America. Through her writing, the reader is introduced to her family and all the places that they visit, including Port-au-Prince during election time, where a bomb nearly kills Celiane and her mother. Their struggles in Haiti come to a close as they travel to meet her father in New York at Christmastime. Now their new struggles begin, as they have to become accustomed to American life.

Discussion Questions